Introductory Chemistry Online

Introductory Chemistry Online is an open-source introductory chemistry textbook/workbook that is designed cover a college-level one-semester course. Many contemporary textbooks in chemistry seem have adopted the notion that "more is better"; the books are long, expensive, and the pages are often cluttered with interesting tidbits and restatements of what it is that you have “just learned”. The Chemistry Online text, on the other extreme, is designed to be simple, uncluttered and very much to the point.

This text was under development at a main-stream publisher when I realized that it was destined to become "yet another" $200 textbook that would be "revised" every three years. I withdrew from my contract and removed the Publisher's material. A printed, basic black-and-white textbook based on the revised Introductory Chemistry Online text is relatively inexpensive (about $30), compared with traditional textbooks, and is available through the Wikibooks mechanism, or through the Chemistry Online website.

Profits from book sales support the external site and help pay contractual licensing fees and royalties. You can also print the book yourself by clicking on 'print version' on the left sidebar, or download the book as PDF and print it there. You can also visit Special:Book, compile all pages within the book and order a copy to be printed from PediaPress. Within the printed text, the photographs, illustrations and problems are either licensed through third-party vendors, prepared by contributing authors, or they are available within the public domain. Because the licensed content cannot be distributed as public domain, Figures, Exercises and End-of-Chapter problems are only available through links provided in the text; but the full content is available.